Of the coming Zelda Master List

Beating The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword a couple weeks back simultaneously signaled the end of another series “challenge” and the beginning of a brand new list. With Castlevania, my friend Jon and I played through every game in the series. It seemed like the right franchise to do at the time, being about a year or so from the release of the newest and rebootiest Castlevania of them all: Lords of Shadow. I thought it turned out marvelously and I was able to then compile a ranked list of every game in that series from worst to best.

So here I am ready to do it all again with Zelda. Things were slightly different this time around, though. For one there are a lot less games in the Zelda series. Also, they’re much longer. What that means is that we’ve spent over a year playing this damn series from inception to completion and have less a significant listing volume-wise to show for it. Because we ended up skipping the most recent handheld iterations, what I’m going to present is a ranking of mostly main entry Zelda games.

Without further ado (because this is an introduction and not the actual post) here is the list of games in the “The Legend of Zelda” series that will be ranked:

The Legend of Zelda
The Adventure of Link
A Link to the Past
Link’s Awakening
Ocarina of Time
Majora’s Mask
Oracle of Seasons
The Wind Waker
Twilight Princess
Skyward Sword

Spirit Tracks your favorite entry? Phantom Hourglass? Or maybe Minish cap!?! I do humbly apologize if my excluding those particular titles is upsetting to you but at a certain point it became much more productive to just focus on the main games (and it more than helped my lack of feeling that there was even a light at the end of the tunnel here).

Another big difference between this list and the Castlevania one is that many of these games will actually secure a ranking in my ultimate Master List, whereas I didn’t feel it necessary to include anything but Symphony from Castlevania. As there is a significant difference and story between each main Zelda entry (as well as gameplay innovations, atmospheric and world contrasts) I feel that most of them deserve their own review, and will eventually get them.

Sit tight, relax, and know that a ranked compilation of one of gaming’s most storied franchises is on its way. I’m sure there will be more than a few surprises in there.